Fringe: YOU HAD ONE JOB.

OH HAI, REMEMBER ME? No, Pacey did not climb into the machine and erase all of my memories of this particular blog, I just was busy? Look, I don’t know what happened. Things. Things and stuff happened, and because this show is already dead and buried in the television cemetery, it fell to the bottom of my list of Things to Blog. So I apologize. And maybe there’s a little part of me that just doesn’t want to let go, not entirely, and so I’ve been dragging my heels about recapping these final few episodes. BUT LET GO I MUST. RECAP I MUST.

But before we get on with it, CONTROVERSY! What is the name of this episode? According to Wikipedia, and Fringepedia and my DVR, the title of this episode is “The Boy Must Live.” But according to Fox’s press site where I downloaded the above image, each available image was from an episode entitled “This Boy Must Live.” So which is it? The or This? Did someone at Fox goof this up, or did everyone assume it was “The” because that’s what the Observer originally said, but the writers actually named the episode “This” to SPOILER ALERT! subtly indicate that we’re talking about a different boy? OR, OR! Is it that Over Here the episode is “The Boy” and Over There it’s “This Boy?” That must be it, right? One of those little changes like Fauxlivia’s red hair and the World Trade Towers that make all difference.

Pacey is blasting away at the Harvard lab amber in the middle of the night when Bishop wanders out with a plan to find Septonald: TO THE SENSORY DEPRIVATION TANK! (Which, you know, we could have done at the beginning of the season MAYBE, and saved us all a lot of trouble/death, but WHATEVER.)

And so they load a naked Bishop (because Wacky Mad Scientist Hijinks!) full of drugs and into the tank, and he begins to remember. While Pacey talks him through his memories — which is sort of contrary to the point of a sensory deprivation tank, yes? — Bishop begins to notice details from Septonald’s apartment, and describes the scene outside the window, allowing AsteriskAstrid to determine that the apartment is in Williamsburg near the bridge. How? FRINGE EVENT. But will Septonald still be there? (Yes, of course, because plot.)

At Observer HQ, Kahl Himmler is listening to the recording of Mrs. Roboto’s phone call and having some REALLY HARD thinks about it when a lesser Observer tells him that He is ready to see him now. So Kahl Himmler instructs Lesser Observer to keep looking for the Fringies, while he pops into 2609 for a sec. KBAI.

The Fringies head into Williamsburg, where Bishop finds Septonald’s apartment immediately because this is only a 40-minute show and we don’t have a lot of time to waste wandering around Brooklyn, knocking on random doors. Pacey notices that Bishop is in a remarkably good mood — and it worries him. But Bishop explains that when he was Touched by a Michael, everything changed. Bishop came to understand that for all his brilliance, he knew nothing, Pacey Snow, and it was good. Furthermore, Bishop was able to remember things from the other timeline, the one that disappeared when Pacey entered the Bowflex of Doom. He remembered seeing Pacey again for the first time at St. Claire’s and the first time Pacey called him dad and how scared he was when Pacey got into the Bowflex of Doom and told him he was going to have to let him go and his feelings of foreshadowing I MEAN foreboding. Pacey wonders how Michael was able to do this for Bishop and I wonder at Pacey being able to muster surprise at anything anymore. But whatever, the point is, Bishop didn’t think he could love Pacey more, but now that he knows everything they have been through … HUGZ! And never mind me as I curl up into a weepy ball over here because I KNOW THIS CAN’T POSSIBLY END WELL.

Bishop and the Fringies find Septonald’s apartment, knock on the door and then wait as a half-dozen locks and bolts are undone. Septonald is shocked to see them after this 21-year game of Hide and Seek. He then notices Michael, and is like ZOMG!! and Michael is like ZOMG!! but really really quietly.

So they all go inside Septonald’s apartment and get comfortable because Septonald has some exposition to get through. ALRIGHT, SO. Before the Observers came and took everything for themselves, the Observers put September in time out (literally) for getting too cozy with the Fringies. They removed his clever stick from his neck and gave him hair implants and now he’s just like us and can’t just hop from time to time whenever he feels like it.

And Michael? How does that work? OK, so. In 2167, a scientist in Norway will figure out how to make people smarter by rewiring the brain to make them less jealous, which sounds awesome, but in actuality just opens the door for more and more tinkering with the brain — more and more smarts, less and less feels — until we eventually get to the Observer supernerd mind. Since there were no feels, no one wanted to rub their naughty bits together to make the babies anymore, and so they invented cloning. And that’s why there are only male Observers even though it sure seems like the womenfolk would have gotten smarter too and could have been cloned, BUT STOP WORRYING ABOUT THAT. MISOGYNYFRINGE EVENT. The Observers realized that Michael’s brain was developing differently — he was both intelligent and capable of feeling, so they halted the maturation process and scheduled him for destruction, so September hid him in the past because he’s Michael’s father-clone-donor. Flonor.

As for how Michael fits into the plan to defeat the Observers, the idea is to send him into 2167 and show the idiot scientists who started this mess in the first place that it’s possible to be both super-smart and super-feelsy, if, you know, not all that chatty. And then the scientists will make the right choice, which is to not make the Observers? Make the Observers but make them super-nice? I’m not really sure here? I’m pretty sure the Underpants Gnomes came up with this plan. But the “Profit” here is that the Observers won’t exist. Because, sure, that’s how time travel works.

EXCEPT THAT IT TOTALLY ISN’T. If the Observers cease to exist, then Michael ceases to exist, and then he can’t go backwards and then forwards in time to save the day, right? And if he doesn’t then show up in 2167 to keep the scientists from ruining humanity, the Observers will happen and the whole cycle starts all over again. THIS IS WHY WHATEVER HAPPENS HAPPENS, Y’ALL. YOU CAN NOT CHANGE THE PAST, EVEN IF IT IS A PAST THAT IS IN THE FUTURE. COME ON.

But apparently all these super-smart Fringies think they can change the future-past, and to that end, Septonald has a whole storage container filled with stuff they need to put together with all the other bits and pieces the Fringies have been collecting all season so as to make themselves a time machine. Olivia comes up with her own implications for time travel: if this plan works NOTHING WILL CHANGE BECAUSE MICHAEL WON’T EXIST TO PREVENT THE OBSERVERS FROM BEING CREATED IN THE FIRST PLACE I mean, Olivia Jr. will live! Allelujah, allelujah! She is risen! Pacey, however, has a skeptical.

In 2069, Kahl Himmler meets with another, larger Observer whom for our purposes we will call Khal Hess because he doesn’t strike me as quite as powerful as a Kahl Hitler. Kahl Himmler explains that they found Anomaly XB-6783746 hidden in 2036. Kahl Hess asks why, and Kahl Himmler is like, oh, I don’t know, maybe because someone thinks he’s important? Come on, use that giant emotionless brain of yours. Geez. Anyway, the thing is, he’s being hidden by these super irritating resisters, and Kahl Himmler would really, really, really like to go back in the past and get rid of them before they can make all this trouble, please and thank you. Kahl Hess flatly tells him Kahl Himmler most certainly may not mess with the time continuum, they’re not prepared for any unexpected messes that he might create. And anyway, statistically speaking, they have a 99.9999% chance of always arriving at this particular moment in time, so who cares about those nobodies?OH COME ON, Kahl Himmler pleads. PLEEEEEEEEASE? THEY REALLY REALLY MAKE ME MAD IF I KNEW WHAT THAT FEELING WAS. Nope! says Kahl Hess. Get over it, and get out.

So Kahl Himmler returns to 2036 and orders his minions to find Septonald through the tracking chip they implanted in him. They arrive at Septonald’s apartment where Kahl Himmler and some Lesser Observer poke around, find the chip and a mess of blood in the bathroom sink, listen to some jazz and play with a snowglobe until Septonald ruins all their fun by blowing the joint up remotely. But Kahl Himmler and Lesser Observer poof themselves out in the nick of time because they always do that. Some Brown Shirts arrive and inform Kahl Himmler that they caught the Fringies driving around in a minivan on surveillance, so he orders them to set up a perimeter because little known fact: Observers are huge Jack Bauer fans. “Dammit, there’s no time!” they like to yell at one another because it’s a pun.

Septonald and Bishop go to Septonald’s storage unit sans kids, and Bishop’s like, O HEY, that time you rescued me and Pacey from the lake and you told me that “the boy must live,” you weren’t talking about my son, but yours! Huh! (Except Pacey saved two universes, too, so whatever, Writers. You can act like you meant this all along, but I, for one, am not buying it.) Bishop also notes that when Michael touched him he saw something about how he’s going to have to sacrifice himself as part of the plan? Septonald is all, Yeah, dude, you kept insisting that it was a way for you to make amends for all the other bad stuff you had done. Septonald then asks Bishop if he remembers anything about a white tulip, and Bishop does: it was a sign from God (or a time-traveling Robocop playing God — tomato, tomahto). Well, Septonald took it from the former timeline and brought it to Bishop to give him hope that the plan would work. Bishop asks for it now, and Septonald is like, yo, I don’t know what you did with it.

The two then leave the unit, pack the items into the Fringies’ minivan, and Septonald announces that he’s got some other things to handle, it was great to see you again, son-clone, but flonor has to abandon you again, KBAI. So the Fringies load up and try to leave Brooklyn only to discover Jack Bauer’s Kahl Himmler’s perimeter and checkpoints. They call AsteriskAstrid who hacks into the surveillance system and informs them that the only way out is to hoof it and take the train. So that’s what they do, Olivia and Michael walking separately from Bishop and Pacey so as to not call attention to themselves. And they make it to the train safely, hooray! But then just as the doors are about to close, Michael deliberately steps out of the train and walks directly over to some Brown Shirts and Kahl Himmler himself. ACK! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU ARE TERRIBLE AT THIS. ALL OF YOU ARE TERRIBLE AT THIS.

I don’t have much to add to this episode; it was just so much exposition, and it irritated me to no end. While it answered a number of questions about the Observers and Michael and what the whole plan and point is, it also created a number of paradoxes and I’m having difficulty being forgiving. Specifically on the whole “whatever happened, happened” business, this is sacrosanct (and one of the reasons — but not the only one — why I hated Looper). But for a show that has played with time travel and the implications of multi-verses, etc. so intelligently for 5 years, to dismiss what most physicists and philosophers agree is a fundamental truth — that you can not change the past — is almost unforgivable. At the very, very least, it is irritating.

But it also leaves open a huge logistical hole: why didn’t September take Michael into 2167 himself? He tries to explain that he understood the Observer’s invasion plan only after they had removed his implant, thereby grounding him and keeping him from being able to do anything about it, but presumably he is from 2609, too, and must have known the history? So instead of all this hoo-ha of hiding the kid in 2008 and then waiting 30 years to save the planet, why not just take him to 2167 in the first place WHILE YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TIME TRAVELING ABILITIES ABOUT YOU and skip all the middle part (ignoring the whole “you can’t change the past because it creates a paradox” thing, which I am still not ignoring BUT WHATEVER)? I mean, besides lazy writing?

Ugh. Alright. Look, I’ve seen the rest of the season, and I become considerably less grumpy over the last two episodes, promise. But I still had to shake my fist at this, how could I not shake my fist at this? Because the thing is? Whatever else you want to say about it, Lost got it right. Everyone loses someone at some point and wishes that they could go back in the past and change things so that events would unfold differently, but we can’t. And that is the fundamental heartbreak of being human: that we can’t change the past, no matter how desperately we want to. We can only move on. And that’s why Juliet and Olivia Jr. have to stay dead, and Michael traveling into the future-past is a terrible, terrible, no good plan. Seriously. For serious.

Easter Eggs

Fringepedia tells me that Williamsburg was where the first Observer beacon appeared in the first Observer-centric episode, creatively entitled “Beacon.”

They also tell me the glyphs spell GRACE — which is what Bishop was given when he was touched by Michael.

One Response

Thank you. The ending drove me bats too, for the same reasons. Heh I’ve even thought that the inability to tinker with timelines is why the show ended so clumsily— editing out the first three years broke the timeline.

I’ve looked back at the first season, and all the indicators were of a war with the other side (not observers) and travel to other universes (not timelines) and of course, Peter was the boy who had to live; the ret-con at the end of S5 was needless and leaden. Or needlessly Wyman-centric. For a show that started out super smart, and getting so many notes so right, it really collapsed under its own weight at about the halfway point. The characters were amazing, and the stories at the beginning were, too; I think if they had continued to trust the broader viewership it started with (instead of trying to shoehorn it into being LOSTII since some reviewers demanded it) it would not have hemorrhaged viewers the way it did. Once the B story became the A story, and stayed that way, it got more and more annoying to see those awesome characters and situations just serve a soap opera plot.

Remember how interactive the show was to start? With figuring out the glyphs, and reading Walter’s notes, and trying to decipher diagrams and easter eggs–back when there were things to decipher, instead of just being set deco?